Craigs House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

CRAIGS HOUSE
Detached three-bay, three storey dwelling having single-story porch to east, located on sloped, corner lawn, with dual frontage facing east to Deerpark Road, Bellaghy and west to courtyard. The house is located to the north-east of the Bellaghy Bawn site, and to the left of the main entrance gates.

Principle symmetrical elevation faces east and comprises pitched natural slate roof with diminishing courses, black clay ridge tiles. Two cement rendered chimneys with stone capping and lead flashing at opposing gable end. Half-round cast-iron gutter and brackets. Gable-fronted entrance porch having exposed rafters, painted timber bargeboard and roll-top red clay ridge, ogee-moulded gutter and circular down-pipe. White painted harled and roughcast rendered walls, raised eaves course. Cross pattress wall ties to second floor.

Segment-headed window openings having painted stone sills. having six-paned single-glazed timber casement windows to second floor and six over six single-glazed timber sliding sash windows to first floor. Square-headed window opening to ground floor having segment-headed six over six single-glazed timber sliding sash windows to ground floor.

Edwardian-styled single-glazed timber entrance door with coloured panes, flanked by fixed sidelights to porch, approached by six concrete steps leading from front garden path (east) leading to cast iron gate between rubble stone walls at street level. Square-headed window openings to north and south elevations of entrance porch having six over six single-glazed timber sliding sash windows.

Rear elevation to east is asymmetrical three-bay having two timber single glazed sliding sash (six over six panes), two timber casement windows and an original timber boarded door with fanlight. No openings to second floor. The door is accessed via stone steps that descend from upper ground level in the courtyard behind the house. Cross pattress wall ties to second floor.

Side elevation to south is blank abutted by single storey rendered wall with blanked door opening. Single cast iron down pipe.

Side Elevation to north has two irregularly sized windows, both timber and single glazed, sliding sash. Original, single glazed and panelled door at ground level.

Materials

Roof: Pitched roof - natural Welsh slate with diminishing courses, black clay ridge tiles. Two cement rendered chimneys with stone capping and lead flashing at opposing gable ends.

Windows: Variety of original & later additions of timber, sliding sash, single-glazed, putty fronted, with black painted stone cills and painted black window surrounds. Timber single glazed casement windows with top opening sections.

Walls: Painted roughcast render

RWGs: Cast iron, Including all bracketry.

Boundary walls: Rubblestone with cement caps to eastern side and cast-iron railings on cement base (original) to western elevation.

Gates: Original wrought iron pedestrian gate on eastern side. Original wrought iron gates to gate screen on south side.

Historical information

This bawn was commenced in c.1614 by the Vintners’ Company, on the 32,000ac lands it had recently been granted as one of the London Companies participating in the Plantation of Londonderry. Like many of its kind, the bawn was intended to form the administrative / defensible core of a new settlement, in this case ‘Vintnerstown’ at Bellaghy. Sited, (though possibly unwittingly), on the site of an Early Christian ringfort, construction was initially undertaken by the Vintners’ agent, Henry Jackson. Headway seems to have been slow, however, and in a change of tack in 1616 the Company leased the Bellaghy holding, along with responsibility for the completion of the building work, to John Rowley, who had served as Lord Mayor of Derry. Rowley died the following year and his lands and obligations passed to his business partner, Baptist Jones, the Salters’ Company agent.

Jones made progress, and in 1618/19 Nicholas Pynnar was able to report that at Bellaghy there was ‘a bawn of brick and lime, 100 feet square, with two round flankers, and a good rampart…also within the bawn 2 good houses one opposite to the other; the one is 70 feet long and 25 feet wide and the other is nothing inferior unto it’. Three years later Thomas Phillips described ‘a manner house of Lyme and brick 60 foot long, 27 foot broad, 2 stories high, tiled, with one round flanker, 30 foot broad and 2 stories high battlemented, with a parapet, and foot pace, leaded: and one house of brick opposite to the former 54 foot long, 26 foot broad, one storie high with the like round flanker. There is also a brick wall, 14 foot high coped with vent, and crest, with a rampier of earth 6 foot thick, faced with stone, which wall together with the said houses and flankers doe make a court, or bawne, 100 foot square paved, which comands the town adjoining thereunto…’.

Thomas Raven’s pictorial map that accompanies Phillips’ survey (captioned ‘The Vintners buildings at Belleaghe’) provides the first visual documentation of the site and shows a largely brick-built square enclosure structure with prominent ogee-domed flankers to the northwest and southeast. To the south is a house, with another to the west (said to have been occupied at this time by Jones’s daughter, Charity and her husband) and in between these - to the southwest corner - a small, angled, square tower with what appears to be something similar over - or next to - the centrally located gateway on the north wall. To the north was the settlement itself, which consisted of a shingled ‘church newlie built…a good mill house and 2 mills therein, and 15 cage work houses…4 smale thatched houses and 10 cabbons’, and in the middle of the main street, a market cross next to which was a set of stocks.

The newly knighted Sir Baptist Jones died in c.1623-24 (owing over £300 to the Company) and the lease – plus obligation for the former’s debts - were assigned to Henry Conway, who also married Jones’s widow. Like his predecessors, Conway seems to have had a fractious relationship with the Vintners’, but his position was secured in the 1630s when the London Companies’ Ulster estates were forfeited to the Crown, and he obtained a new grant that included the bawn.

During the 1641 Rising, the Bellaghy settlement was attacked by Sir Phelim O’Neill’s forces and the townspeople took refuge within the bawn itself. Conway is said to have surreptitiously attempted to cut a deal with the insurgents (through which he would surrender the bawn to them in return that he ‘might be permitted to carry off certain valuables’); ultimately, however, the ‘towne and castle [were] fired to their utter undoing’, and the inhabitants forced to find their own safety.

Like many other Plantation sites, the sequence of events relating to Bellaghy in the two decades immediately following the 1640s disturbances is uncertain. The bawn is said by several secondary sources to have renewed / rebuilt c.1643-45, but little appears clear as the site does not seem to be referred to in the 1654-56 Civil Survey, 1659 Census, or the 1660s hearth money returns, all of which could perhaps indicate that it may have remained abandoned during this time. If reconstruction work was indeed carried out at some point during this period, it is likely to have been undertaken by Sir John Clothworthy (d.1665), Viscount Massereene from 1660, who ‘assumed’ Henry Conway’s interests in the area, with the 2nd Viscount (Clotworthy’s son-in-law, John Skeffington, [d.1695]) eventually securing a lease from the Vintners in the 1670s.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the smaller house to the western side of the complex was not rebuilt after the 1640s, and that its site was levelled. It is likely that the larger dwelling to the south was renewed in the mid to later-17th century but given the extent of subsequent late Georgian-era changes to this side (see below), little evidence of this has been discerned from excavation. The round north-western flanker as depicted on Raven’s map was not reconstructed (its remains seem to have served in the early 1700s as place to dump rubbish), whilst the angled square tower to the southwest, which may originally have been timber, appears to have been was replaced with the current corner structure at some point prior to c.1770.

In 1714 William Conolly MP (1662-1729), subsequently Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, became the chief tenant. He had been acting as the Vintners’ agent prior to this but had taken possession of the estate due to the 3rd Viscount Massereene (d.1714) having fallen into debt. By 1737 Conolly’s nephew and heir, William James Conolly (d.1754) had secured a lease in perpetuity of the Company’s entire Irish holding, and his descendants were to maintain ownership of much of this into the early 20th century.

For the remainder of the 1700s following the Conolly purchase, the settlement of Bellaghy witnessed what one historian has described as ‘continuous’ but ‘unspectacular’ growth. Documentation concerning the bawn at this time is relatively scarce, but it is likely that at least for a time it remained the abode of the agent, this office being filled by Abraham Hamilton from at least 1736 to c.1769. At some point around the latter year a new agent’s residence, a ‘good 2-storey brick house’ that became known as the ‘Manor House’, was constructed some distance to the northwest (off Main St, where the Seamus Heaney Homeplace now stands), and subsequently the bawn appears to have been sold off as a private dwelling. In 1772 Thomas Connolly granted Richardson Williams, a Dublin attorney, a ‘lease for lives renewable forever’ of the bawn along with just over 103ac of land, at a rent of £63 per annum. An undated map of the ‘Town tenements and fields of Bellaghey’ which appears to date from around this date, shows the site with three (round) flankers, but with no other structures deliniated..

Williams would appear to have used the property as an occasional or summer residence. He retained it until In spring 1791 when he sold the entire holding, which is described as including houses, a garden, orchard and demesne and woods, for £3,634-7-8 to Bishop Frederick Hervey, the Earl of Bristol, who was at that point amid constructing his magnificent new palace at Ballyscullion, just east of Bellaghy. Interestingly, a ‘Belfast News-Letter’ report of the previous December mentions the Bishop returning to ‘the castle of Bellaghy’, suggesting that that he may have been already renting the bawn as a temporary home in the area whilst the mansion was being built. Whatever the case, Hervey clearly invested in alterations to the site as witnessed by bills from Dublin architect Francis Sandys during 1791 entitled ‘Bellaghy Castle’, whilst a newspaper sale / lease advertisement of August of same year for the property mentions ‘the large sums expending on the house [which] will make it an object worthy the attention of any gentleman of fortune for his country residence.’ Given its appearance it seems highly likely that much of these ‘large sums’ were spent on building the present ‘Big House’ to the southern side, renovating the neighbouring (southwestern) circular flanker, and the clearing away of the remains of the northwestern flanker and north wall, and landscaping of this area. This landscaping also saw the creation of a new gateway closer to the bend in the road to the north and the construction of a gate lodge next to this. The two structures to the eastern side, on the lower ground outside of the bawn proper, but backing on to the wall, seem to have also been built around this time; however, the southern of these (now known as the ‘Wee House’ with the lowest level as 'Robinson's House') is awkwardly proportioned and has an odd self-contained ground level section with thick walls and a vaulted celing, and may well represent an adaptation of an older structure. To the south again, also beyond the original enclosure directly south of the flanker, the two lower sections of the present line of outbuildings (as demarcated by their ridge lines) may also be of the 1790s, but maps suggest the northernmost section is later, c.1830s-40s.

The sale advert of August 1791 refers to Charles Hill as one of two people those wishing to buy or lease the property should apply to. The Hill family were to have a long association with the site, although it is not clear whether Charles lived here at this time. By at least 1802 it was in the hands of George Madden, who in that year wrote to Hervey (‘my landlord – my patron, my friend’) complaining that the land on or close to his own, used by the agent, John Spotswood, in the construction of a road, was illegally obtained. The dates of Madden’s tenure are unclear, but by at least 1831 the Big House, Wee House and the southern outbuildings had passed to Charles Hill’s grandson, John Hill, whilst the larger of the buildings outside of the walls had become the local police, (i.e. Irish Constabulary), barrack.

The 1831 valuation supplies the first accurate survey of the post-1791 site, with the Big House recorded as measuring 76ft x 22 x 20, the attached flanker tower 26(dia.) x 25, with another section (presumably the link between the house and flanker) amounting to 15 x 10 x 18, and the Wee House / Robinson's House measuring 24½ x 21 x 25. The outbuildings are noted of consisting of sections of 33 x 21½ x 12, 44 x 21½ (both with shingled roofs) and 10 x 9 x 16, and the ‘gate house’, 19 x 13 x 7. The ‘police barrack’ is recorded as 26 x 49 x 23½, with a thatched outbuilding of 32 x 21 x 10. The near contemporary first edition OS map shows an arrangement similar to the present, but with the flanker oddly omitted and the outbuildings depicted as shorter than the current range. The garden and orchard are shown to the west and south, with what looks like another orchard to the northwest, close to the churchyard. The 1836 OS Memoirs adds a little more detail to this picture, describing the entire ‘Castle’ ‘perfectly plain in every respect…the dwelling house…by no means spacious, and the only pretensions it has to its name is a circular tower of brick at one extremity…’.

The revised edition OS map of 1850-54 shows the outbuilding range as today and the barrack (‘Constabulary Bk.’) specifically captioned. The 1856 valuation lists dimensions similar to those of 1831, but with the linking section (here referred to as ‘side wing) now 22ft in breadth, and the outbuildings defined as ‘stables’ - 45ft x 22 x 12, ‘byre’ - 33 x 22 x 12, ‘coach house’ - 44 x 22 x 10, and ‘harness house’ – 17 x 18½ x 6½, with a ‘garden house’ of 16 x 16 x 18 also mentioned; the last may have been the small building marked on the boundary of the southern yard and garden on both the 1830 and revised map. The Wee House is noted as vacant at this time, whilst the barrack is noted as possessing a ‘privy’ of 6 x 6 x 5½.

The Constabulary vacated the last building in or just prior to 1874. It remained unused until 1889 when (following the death of John Hill the previous year) the whole castle site was sold to Dr. George Matthew Thompson. He converted the former barrack to a dispensary and may also have made alterations to the Big House around the same time, possibly replacing the roof, whose overhang looks late Victorian. Additional outbuildings may have been added to the south and west of the of the original range at this time also, as shown on the second edition OS map of 1906.

In the 1901 Census, the 41yr-old Dr Thompson, a native of Coagh, Co. Tyrone, is noted as living here with his Co. Wicklow-born wife, Edith, their four young children, and two domestic servants, one of whom, Isabella Dawson, was only 11 years old. The house itself is noted as a ‘1st class’ dwelling with 22 rooms in use by the family. By 1911 five of the Thompson’s by now nine children were occupying the house with their parents, along with a medical assistant, Dr Robert J. Spence, and two domestic servants.

In late 1944, a few months following Dr, Thompson’s death, the Castle – consisting of ‘the main residence, with its gate lodge and two other dwelling-houses and 23 acres of land', was sold for £2,000. It was bought by Dr. Thompson’s daughter, Dr. Frances Thomas and her husband, Dr. Edward Thomas, who had also taken over the practice. The Thomas’s retained the property until c.1976 when it was acquired by Dr Thomas’s partner, Dr. Charles Gibson Lowry, who lived in a c.1960s house built just southwest of the rear yard.

The old property was subsequently let out to tenants until vacated in 1984. Already listed (in April 1976), the property was acquired by DOENI from the Lowry family in 1988 and became a State Care Monument. A comprehensive conservation project, along with several excavations, was carried out from the late 1980s onwards (see below) and the site was opened to the public in 1996.

Sequence of archaeological excavations at Bellaghy Bawn

1989 - Excavtion by Nick Brannon - The purpose of the excavation was to locate the lesser of the two houses within the bawn courtyard, the remains of the 17th century round flanker tower and the rampart/gun platform along west side.
Note in Excavations 1989, p16-7 and Excavations 1990, p21
Brannon, N,. 1989. Derry 1989:015: Bellaghy Bawn, Bellaghy. Excavations Bulletin [Online] Available at http://www.excavations.ie/

1990 - Nick Brannon - Conclusion to the project begun in 1989. Further examined the SW corner of the early 17th century Bawn.

1995 - Declan Hurl - Investigation was undertaken within two rooms of the main house. Two phases of activity were identified – the most recent from 18th century, and below this was a phase of early Christian activity associated with the rath.

2009 - Brian Sloan - Excavation designed as a public outreach exercise. Following geophysical survey of the fields west of Bawn, anomalies were targeted for excavation. Trench 1 showed remains of a garden pathway with sherds of 19th/20th century ceramics, glass, brick, flint flakes and corroded iron objects.
Trench 2 excavation did not expose any archaeological significance with finds similar to Trench 1.
The excavation overall revealed very limited archaeological significance.

2012 - Brian Sloan - CAF monitoring excavation of two trenches for the installation of drainage pipes.
Trench 1 was adjacent to the exterior of the Eastern Bawn wall, which showed no archaeological significance.
Trench 2 was running North-South to the remains of the Western wall, in the area of the previous 1989 excavation. There were small fragments of animal bones, shell and plastic.
The East-West return of the service trench located in the Northern end revealed a brick-and-mortar wall following the line of the upstanding remains of the Bawn wall.
The Northern end appeared to be bonded into another brick wall. This appears to represent the remains of the circular turret depicted on Ravens map of 1622.
The walls were deemed to be of archaeological significance as construction elements of the bawn and left in situ. There were no finds.

References – Primary sources
1 TCD MS 839, fols 096r-097v Deposition of Rev. Charles Anthony – June 1642 [Also online at https://1641.tcd.ie/index.php/deposition/?depID=839096r065, accessed Nov. 2022]
2 PRONI D1911/4/2/J Copy tracing of map from an old lease of Bellaghy – c.1734-89
3 PRONI T2825/C/17 ‘Security for Abraham Hamilton of Bellaghy’s faithful discharge of his trust as agent the Vintners’ Proportion, estate of William Conolly Junior’ – 1736-[1739]
4 PRONI T3019/4650 Letter from Capt. Pierce Butler, Magherafelt, to [?] Waite – 19 July 1763
5 ‘Belfast News-Letter’ – 19 March 1765, p.2; 17 April 1767, p.3; 16 May 1769, p.3; 8 February 1784, p.3; 4 February 1784, p.3; 8 March 1785, p.3; 24 December 1790, p.4; 8 February 1791, p.4; 23 August 1791, p.3
6 PRONI D1062/1/16 ‘A map of the town tenements and fields of Bellaghey’ – ND, possibly c.1770s
7 PRONI T2825/C/18 ‘Receipts and letters to John Spotswood of Bellaghy, the then agent for the Vintners' Proportion estate, from Thomas Conolly, Latouches' Bank in Dublin’ – 1777-1802
8 PRONI D2798/3/64, 67, 68 Letters from Richard Williams to Bishop Hervey – 24 March 1791; 8 May 1791;
9 PRONI D2798/2/102 Statement of carpentry work down at Downhill and Bellaghy Castle [Document currently missing – Nov. 2022.]
10 PRONI D1514/1/2/14 Letter from George Madden, Bellaghy Castle – 13 September 1802
11 OS maps 6inch County Series, Londonderry sheet 37 – 1830, 18
12 PRONI VAL1B/526 First valuation, Ballyscullion parish – 1831, 1850-54, 1906, 1927
13 ‘Newry Telegraph’ – 8 January 1833, p.3
14 OS Memoirs, Parish of Ballyscullion – 1836
15 PRONI VAL2B/5/43B Second valuation, Ballyscullion parish (House book) - 1856
16 PRONI VAL12B/34/6A-G Annual valuation revision book, Bellaghy ED – 1860-1929
17 Census of Ireland -1901, 1911
18 ‘Belfast Telegraph’ – 6 August 1927, p.8
19 ‘Northern Whig’ – 22 January 1945, p.3

Secondary sources
20 Hill, George, ‘The Ulster Plantation’, (Belfast, 1877)
21 ‘Belfast Telegraph’ – 16 September 1958, p.3
22 Jope, E.M., "Moyry, Charlemont, Castleraw and Richill: Fortification to Architecture in the North of Ireland 1570-1700", in 'Ulster Journal of Archaeology' Vol. 23 (1960), pp. 97-123
23 PRONI D2481/5/9 Typescript biography f Dr. George Matthew Thompson - 1969
24 Austin Currie, E., “Landscape development in south Derry in the eighteenth century” in ‘Studia Hibernica’, 1979, No.19(1979), pp.78-101
25 Curl, James Stevens, ‘The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-1914’, (Philimore, 1984), pp.367-73
26 Donnelly, C., 'Living Places: Archaeology, Continuity and Change at Historic Monuments in Northern Ireland', (Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, 1997)

Secondary sources online
27 https://excavations.ie/report/2015/Derry/0024672/ [Accessed Nov. 2022]
28 https://www.greatparchmentbook.org/2020/04/30/the-story-of-henry-conway-and-the-plantation-of-londonderry/ - posted 30 April 2020 [Accessed Nov. 2022
29 https://www.dia.ie/architects/view/4735/SANDYS-FRANCIS%5B2%5D#tab_biography [Accessed No. 2022]
30 https://derekhill.tribalpages.com/tribe/browse?userid=derekhill&view=0&pid=54&ver=1052 [Accessed No.2022]
31 https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/communityarchaeology/PDFFileStore/Filetoupload,446114,en.pdf [Accessed Nov. 2022]
32 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3992092/ [aAcessed Nov. 2022]
33 https://daro.qub.ac.uk/pages/2016-rebrand/news/obits---all/obits--charles-gibson [Accessed Nov.2022]

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
D. Plan Form
E. Spatial Organisation
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest

Evaluation

CRAIGS HOUSE

Detached three-bay, three storey dwelling with gable porch to front, located on corner lawn, with dual frontage facing east to Deerpark Road, Bellaghy and west to entrance forecourt. The house is located to the north-east of the Bellaghy Bawn site, and to the left of the main entrance gates. The building was constructed as constabulary barracks within the fortified bawn and features much original fabric and a strong connection to the group setting, and part of the arrival into the Bawn courtyard.

The House retains much historic character, despite some alterations to the interior of the ground floor, due to the symmetrical presentation of the plan and front elevation. Window and door openings are unaltered, with the proximity of the house to the boundary wall forming an attractive garden setting within an otherwise defensive arrangement. Craigs House is one of the primary buildings that is seen from the road when entering the Bawn site from Castle Street and the front elevation is integral to the site's presentation.